Our Subjective Spectacles Are Filtering, Deleting, Distorting & Generalising Information. Always.
We used to think that we were bombarded with about 4 million bits per second of information. Today, we believe that figure is about 11 million.
Our brains do have the ability to process all the information we take in. However, with this much data floating about we can have trouble with our filing systems. It can be challenging to separate the important from the trivial. We’re constantly filtering, distorting, generalising and deleting information with our “Subjective Spectacles”. What’s more, all this processing is being done by living cells. And cells get tired.
All this information is processed by the neurons in our brains. They are living cells with a metabolism. Just like the rest of our bodies they need oxygen and glucose to survive, and overwork makes them fatigued.
Sensory Overload
Every status update you read on social media or text message you get from a friend, is competing for resources in your brain with important things like your relationships, your health, you aspirations, managing your money, where you left your smartphone, and how best to manage your career and your business.
By the way, that’s in addition to all the sensory information you’re receiving, moment by moment. Whether you’re warm or cold, the people in front of you speaking, your new shoes rubbing your foot, noisy traffic, the sound of roadworks and so much more.
Every single person has a different pair of “Subjective Spectacles” and every person selects different information to hold in their awareness. Even when we’re all presented with the same information, everyone experiences it differently
In 2011 we were processing 5 times the volume of information per day, than we were in the 1980s. Can you imagine how much data we're processing now?
How Subjective Spectacles Are Different For Everyone In The Real World
When people visit us in Sri Lanka they often take a boat trip on the Dutch Canal into Negombo Lagoon to see the wildlife. It’s a good trip for families, as the helpful guides manage to pick out that tiny lizard on the tree branch and encourage the monkeys to leap on the boat and steal your sandwiches. Kids love it.
Recently, we had two families take the trip in short succession.
The first family discussed their thoughts on the trip when they came back for a late breakfast. They reported enjoying the trip, they were happy with the the variety of wildlife they saw and then expressed extreme disappointment that the guide was unaware of the scientific names for many of the animals.
This one teeny-tiny detail had labelled their 4-hour boat trip as ‘disappointing’ in their brains.
Just the idea that the guide did not know the scientific names for the animals triggered a range of emotional reactions and conscious processing which milli-second by milli-second compounded to build a giant wall between the family and their potential enjoyment.
They filed it away in the part of their brain that stores ‘disappointing.’ In fact, that’s probably the only thing they’ll remember about that trip by now.
Same Experience, different filters
The second family bounded in after their adventure.
Energetic and excited about the cute baby monkey they saw being cuddled by it’s mother, the amazing array of different birds shown to them by their guide, their equal curiosity and concern as they saw the amount of plastic and rubbish floating in the river, the chameleon they just managed to photograph, a few jumping fish, and the water monitor that looked like a mini-Komodo dragon.
Funniest of all; the very smelly fish market that made them all crinkle their noses and laugh. “A wonderful trip and I’m sure we’ve taken 400 photographs. LOVED it!”
Same trip. Same guide. Different day. Different families. Different brains. Neither one is right or wrong. Just processing information in a different way based on their experience from the past, present, their values and beliefs, what they’re used to, what makes them uncomfortable, what makes them comfortable and so on. You know the drill.
We can only see what we are, or what we’ve experienced. Even then, we’re experiencing it whilst battling with our subjective spectacles to get a clear view, based on a whole host of other factors at the time of seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, smelling or processing.
How does this filtering happen?
Researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi estimates that our information intake is about 120 bits per second. This is just a teeny tiny fraction of the 11m bits per second we are bombarded with.
If a piece of data is going to be encoded as part of our experience, we need to have paid conscious attention to it. And just to put this 120 bits per second into perspective for you, if we’re speaking with one person we’re processing 60 bits of information per second. We can just about understand two people talking at the same time, any more than that and there’s little hope.
So the question is, “How do we prioritise what we delete, distort and generalise?”
Mostly, we use our unconscious programming of beliefs, values, and emotions to decide what’s important and what’s not.
Our sensory priorities look like this:
| Eyes – what we see | 10,000,000 |
| Ears – what we hear | 1,000,000 |
| Skin – what we feel | 100,000 |
| Smell – what we smell | 100,000 |
| Taste – what we taste | 1,000 |
It’s no wonder that we have eyes that are bigger than our stomachs!
How do our brains cope?
Today, our filters easily become overwhelmed. The world of data is evolving at a rapid rate and the flexibility of our brains evolved in a simpler world. Effectively, we’re playing catch up.
The neurons working to select key information work largely in the back office of our brain, and completely outside of our conscious awareness.
This is why most ‘general noise’ of our day-to-day lives just get ignored or deleted. Do you remember every element of a journey when you ride for several hours on a train? Your system is constantly protecting you from information that it doesn’t think is important. This unconscious filter follows your values rules when considering what to allow in.
We miss so much information, it’s no wonder that misunderstandings occur so frequently.
We’re demanding more and more from the neurons in our brain and we’re feeling exhausted as a result. Remember that your brain needs downtime, somewhere still and quiet.
Learn more ...
If you’d like to learn more about how your mind works or perhaps you’d like to update your filtering system. You can learn more during NLP Practitioner Training in 3 locations around the globe.
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